A letter to my mom

Hi mother
 I am writing you from Nuremberg. Of course you know by now from the pictures I sent you that I am not here to be a part of satanic cult or anything and as you can see my Geek friends I was telling you about are not aliens from a strange planet but actual people. I understand that some of the times it was hard to believe listening to me calling them as tux93 and tigerfoot, but here they are, you can see them on the photos.

 Now mother please forgive me but the truth is that I actually had 'some' alcohol but there is some law here that force to drink 'some' beer, at least that is what they told me and I did not wanted to have any problems with the law.

 To answer your question, what I liked and not in the 12.3 Marketing hackathon...
Dear mother I had so much fun that it should be illegal. I also learn a lot about doing things but there were some times that I had no idea what I was doing. Now I was among old openSUSE friends from previous hackathons and in a few new ones. Once again the new guys were pretty cool and we had a great bonding as a team. We also had a KDE release party, ok I know that there were a lot of KDE parties around but we were the only ones that had The KDE e.V. president making the presentation, so... Jos (you know that long hair Dutch fellow who it a lot of cheese) also made a presentation there but who cares about him anyway...One of tthe important things I have to tell you about this party mother is that Augustin exposed us as 'The Greek Mafia' so send someone here to take care of him.

 I really liked Hacking for a whole week, learning new things and actually contributing with a more immediate way. We had some meetings with really interesting things. We even had a meeting with Roland Haidl and he heard what we wanted to tell him . What I did not like was that some people did not manage to come and the weather. I mean mother really the last time i was here it was like 25 degrees and this time it was all snow and rain.
So Mother I will soon be back home and I miss you
Just in case I am not, look for me in Brazil
Hugs and kisses
Your son
Kostas

Are we few and small?

The truth is that this blog is a bit left alone, the main reasons are that there is no time but most of all I am not feeling in writing. I wrote so many things the last few months that I ended up actually hate writing... And here I am chattering...

A few nights before I was with a friend of mine that I hadn't seen for quite some time. While catching up the past year and so of news and going around to bars we had some quite interesting talks. The one that stuck in my head started as a conversation about the quality of the source of information and how that affects the quality of the Greek internet. My friend at a certain point ended up saying that although Greek internet is mostly full of crap there are actually people that seek quallity in their sources before they write something, also people who care on make things different by writting truths exist. Now here come the really interesting part of all this. She said that those people feel to be a minority and feel 'small' but the reality is that those people are actualy neither few nor small. The base for that conclution was that in Greek reallity most of the people who have access on the internet, and we were not talking about having a Facebook acount but actually read blogs, read news etc. and writting about all that are usually better educated and seek more stuff than 2 M friends on some social network. That stands on it's own under my opinion but it is my opinion (and my friends) and pay attention to the word usually.

Now thinking about all that got me in the loop of remembering conversations I had from time to time with people around the openSUSE community and generally FOSS people and the frustration I got from those people because they thought the same thing. We are few and small many of those people said to me when there was an idea of organizing something or make something relevant. When I first started mixing with the community and I was inexperienced I must admit that my original thought was that all those were excuses people were saying to me in order to avoid working. After a while I felt the same thing and I understood that those were not excuses but a reality all of those people were living and me because of my excitement was refusing to see. Thank to people that were more experienced than and because those people had the patience to mentor me even when I though I knew everything, I realized that this was a reality. If I ever critisiced you like that I now deeply apologise about this. I know that all of the above still don't make much of a sense and some of you might still wondering what I am trying to say through all that. A fact that goes me to the resume of that conversation I had with my friend.

The resume of that conversation was that people who have a purpose that is not something mainstream usually feel that they are few and small but if you search thoroughly into the internet you will find out that they are more than you think so. All people have to do is search for other people that have common routes or have routes that intersect and move from few to many and from small to big. Widening the way we look ourselves and thinking more out of the box can make the change, you see if you want to change something in the world and make it better requires to often look inside ourselves and changing things to us. 

openSUSE Conference 2012 – Invitation to Lightning Talks and Speedy Geeko

The openSUSE Conference in Prague is about to happen and we know that all of you are really excited about it. One more year with great talks and workshops and the warmth of the openSUSE Community around. Being there is really awesome and being a part of it is really great. Since having fun has no limits for us we feel the need to ask you the following:

• Did you wanted to submit a talk and you were late?
• Do you feel like talking about something that has to do with openSUSE?
• Do you feel like talking about something that has nothing to do with the openSUSE?
• Do you feel the need to have an on-stage group-hug with Izabel and Kostas?
• Can you do all that in 2 to max 5 minutes?

If yes is the answer to at least the last and one other of those questions, here is your chance to make it happen.

This year, on oSC we bring one more time the openSUSE lightning talks and the Speedy Geeko and we encourage everyone to come and be a part of it.

Lightning Talks

After many people submitted talks a bit late to fit on the regular conference Schedule or weren’t sure if they wanted to submit a whole talk in order to present something related to openSUSE, we recognised the need to organise something for all of you. After all there should be place for everyone in the openSUSE Conference.

We invite all people that want to make a short talk or talk short about their work inside openSUSE to join us in Lightning talks. Send your requests, info below.

How it works?

• Each Presenter gets 10 minutes to present their topic (depending on the number of submissions…)
• The topic should be related to openSUSE
• You must send a description of your talk until the 10th of october and have the slides ready to send before the beginning of this years oSC
• Your talk has no slide limit

Time is crucial so after the time limit you will have your microphone taken no matter what…

Speedy Geeko

After last year’s huge success and fun we dare to do it one more time. This year we promise to entertain you showing you the other stuff that openSUSE people do. Last year we had bacon, bees, countries, global personalities plus other cool stuff, this year we hope to be at least that interesting and exciting.

How it works?

• Each Presenter gets 4 minutes to present their topic
• Each Presenter will present with 20 slides
• The slides progress every 15 seconds whether the Presenter is ready or not
• The topic can NOT be related to openSUSE

Time is crucial here too so after the 5 minutes we will find ways to remove the microphone from you. Please don’t make us run for it and be aware that we will carry some sort of weapons.

Instructions

If you feel like participating all you have to do is to follow the instructions below:

• For submitting a lightning talk click here with subject title: Lightning talks
• For submitting a Speedy Geeko talk email click here with subject title: Speedy Geeko

The deadline for sending your talks is 10th of october and we will release both schedules at the 15th.

After we release the schedules all you have to do is to be sure that you will have your presentations given to us at some point before this year’s openSUSE conference.

Of course in an open format, preferably ODF or PDF!

Your hosts
Izabel Valverde and Kostas Koudaras

openSUSE Beta Pizza Party Θεσσαλονίκη

Καλημέρα 
Μα αφορμή τις κυκλοφορίας της Beta 2 διοργανώνω σπίτι μου την Κυριακή 24/6 και ώρα γύρω στις 6 Beta Pizza Party. 
Όσοι είστε από Θεσσαλονίκη ή όσοι μπορείτε να έρθετε Θεσσαλονίκη την Κυριακή και έχετε όρεξη να τεστάρουμε την καινούργια Beta 2 έκδοση για Bugs και να φάτε Pizza από τα χεράκια μου είστε
καλεσμένοι. Αν δεν ξέρετε πως να έρθετε στο σπίτι μου ζητήστε πληροφορίες :D

Δηλώστε συμμετοχή για να ξέρουμε πόσοι θα είμαστε και να κανονίσω πόση Pizza θα ζυμώσω. Θα υπάρχουν και μπύρες αλλά επειδή με μας ποτέ δεν είναι αρκετές, αν έχετε διάθεση να πιείτε παραπάνω φέρτε και καμία εσείς. Ρεύμα, wifi και .iso της Beta 2 θα υπάρχουν διαθέσιμα στον χώρο ;-)
Οι Συμμετοχές κλείνουν την Παρασκευή το απόγευμα στις 6.

Φυσικά αν είστε μακριά και θέλετε να διοργανώσετε το δικός σας Beta
Pizza Party μπορείτε να δείτε τα παρακάτω links
1)http://news.opensuse.org/2012/06/18/beta-means-pizza-join-the-party-or-make-your-own/
2)http://news.opensuse.org/2011/09/30/opensuse-pizza-parties-the-geeko-way/
εδώ υπάρχει και συνταγή για Pizza

Μην ξεχάσετε να δηλώσετε το Party σας στο
http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:BetaPizzaParty

Να περνάτε καλά
Κώστας Κουδάρας